In 1953, Elvis Presley was 18 years old, recently out of high school and far from famous. That summer, he walked into the Memphis Recording Service, home of Sun Records, and paid about $4 to make an acetate containing “My Happiness” and “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin.”
The recording is often described as a gift for his mother Gladys. Graceland still tells that story, although Elvis never actually gave her the acetate and the Presley family did not own a record player, so historians have long questioned whether that was the full reason he entered the studio.
Hear Elvis Presley’s First Recording, “My Happiness”
The session did not make Elvis famous, but it helped put his name on Sun’s radar. Marion Keisker remembered enough about the young singer to make a note of him, and by the following year Sam Phillips brought Elvis back to work with guitarist Scotty Moore and bassist Bill Black.
On July 5, 1954, after a session that had struggled to produce anything exciting, Elvis began playing an upbeat version of Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup’s “That’s All Right.” Moore and Black joined him. Phillips heard something different and had them record it.
Elvis Presley – “That’s All Right” Official Audio
Three days later, Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips played the record on WHBQ. Listeners flooded the station with requests, helping turn the unknown truck driver into a regional sensation almost overnight. More Sun singles and touring followed.
Then came the deal that changed everything.
In November 1955, RCA purchased Elvis’s Sun contract and unreleased material for $35,000, with another $5,000 going directly to Elvis. It was an extraordinary amount for an artist who had been paying a few dollars to record himself only two years earlier.
By January 1956, Elvis was recording for RCA in Nashville. One of the songs from those first sessions was “Heartbreak Hotel,” the record that would help turn his growing regional fame into a national phenomenon.
The entire transformation happened astonishingly fast.
In 1953 Elvis paid about $4 just to hear himself on a record. By the end of 1955, one of America’s biggest record companies was paying tens of thousands of dollars for the right to release his music.